


Lists

by Crustac3an



Series: The Hospital [3]
Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Chapter 3 and Vascula is already done with his shit, Gen, for about five minutes, tremain tries so hard not to do the mad science thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 06:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crustac3an/pseuds/Crustac3an
Summary: Tremain is giving the proposal more thought than Royal expected. He's giving it more thought than he intended to, actually. A lot more.





	Lists

It had been three days since Royal had arrived at the hospital and made his proposal to Tremain. Tremain had spent those three days stalling, trying not to let himself fall back into the comfortable, familiar, hyperfocused rhythm of having a project to work on. He shouldn't have needed to try. At least, not this hard. But the Afterlife Project ending so abruptly had left a sour taste in his mouth, and he needed _something_ to keep his hands busy and his mind occupied.

But Emperors? Even Tremain thought that was going too far. He just wished he _felt_ that way, too.

He shook his head. It was a stupid, terrible idea. Perhaps he just needed something more physical to prove it to himself. Gingerly, as if writing it out was going to make it more real somehow, he began to scratch out a list.

 

_Cons:_

_\- It's an EXTREMELY stupid thing to do_

_\- You'll almost certainly die_

_\- You'll almost certainly take everyone and everything you care about with you_

_\- You have no idea how to do this_

_\- If anyone finds out, you'll be ruined_

_\- Someone WILL find out_

_Pros:_

_\- IF nothing goes wrong, you will have a monster in your basement_

 

Tremain leaned back in his chair, gnawing on the end of his pen as he thought. He shouldn't have needed to think. It was a terrible idea, and he knew it. In fact, he had just listed six very compelling reasons why. He shouldn't have even needed to list them. What he should have done was tell Royal to take his stupid plan and shove it. So why hadn't he?

The hospital's reputation, not to mention his own, were damaged enough as it was. He had been told in no uncertain terms that picking up another new project was the last thing he should be doing right now. Tremain agreed... for the most part. Though he didn't want to admit it, there was a tiny part of him that believed he could still turn things around. That if just one of his crackpot ideas panned out, they would finally have to admit that he wasn't crazy. He wasn't a failure. He wasn't just some hick with delusions of grandeur. And maybe, just maybe, this could be it. Common sense told him that it was not, but for posterity, he added it to his list.

 

_\- IF you pulled it off, you would go down in history_

 

From there, things started to snowball. He minded himself that if- no, _when-_ he inevitably failed, it wouldn't be just him taking the blame. The entire hospital and all of its staff would be discredited as the followers of a madman, if they hadn't already. People could be hurt, killed, left homeless or stranded in the desert. And even if he managed to avoid the worst-case scenario, people would still talk. What kind of lunatic created an Emperor? On _purpose?_

But then, successful people were never madmen. The madmen were the failures. Successful people were visionaries, geniuses, ahead of their time. Maybe something like this was what the world needed to finally see. It could finally prove that his hospital was a legitimate establishment making serious advances in its field.

 

_\- IF you pulled it off, it could finally fix your reputation_

 

Tremain took a deep breath. His heart was racing in his chest. He felt a bit like a gambler betting his last gold piece on one last chance at the jackpot. Maybe it was the Shadow in him, but the thought of that impossibly-tiny chance at success was... tempting. Almost irresistably so. He knew it was wrong, that it was a bad idea, such a bad idea, but that was only making it worse.

The positive side of the list was now half as long as the negative side. He had to tip things back in favor of common sense. "Think, Tremain," He muttered. This was insane. This wasn't like him. He was here to make the world a better place, not to perform pointless experiments that could wipe out a small country if he wasn't careful. It wasn't about his quest for glory. It was about helping people in need. But then again...

 

_\- It could help a lot of people, if you think about it_

 

Until Royal had brought them up a few nights prior, Tremain had never really thought about Emperors. They were a fairy tale. They were something you told your children about so they wouldn't go wandering out into the woods at night. But they were real, weren't they? And they used to be _people,_ didn't they? People with lives, and homes, and families? Imagine, going through your whole life knowing that at any time, something could happen to you, and that when it did, you might become a monster and destroy everything you had ever cared about. How could anyone live with that kind of weight on their shoulders? How had no one tried to do anything about it sooner? Were people really so afraid to meddle in the gods' domain?

"Well, they must be," He said. "Otherwise someone would have done this sooner... I'd at least have some notes, something to go off of...." There were stories, of course, everyone heard the stories. Cultists, zealots and warlords who tries to create their own monsters to lay waste to the land. These tales tended more toward the cautionary than the educational, though. Maybe cultists weren't very good at taking notes. Or perhaps they were, and some misguided fool had destroyed them in order to prevent... well, this. Either way, Tremain was on his own. But he was on a roll, now, and even that could be spun in a more positive way:

 

_\- You would be breaking new ground_

 

A knock came at the door, and he jolted at the sound. He grabbed the list off his desk, smearing still-wet ink on his hands. He crumpled it and tossed it into the wastebasket with the others. Well, near the wastebasket. It was full, anyway.

Vascula opened the door. "Come- come in!" He said. Vascula, already inside, raised an eyebrow.

"Tremain, we need to talk."

"Of course, of course! What, uh, what about?" He asked, gesturing to the chair on the opposite side of his desk. She made no move to sit down. She never did. Instead, she cast her disapproving gaze over the overflowing wastebasket, the stack of unanswered letters, the ink smeared on his hands. Tremain suddenly felt very self-conscious, though he wasn't sure why. He wiped his hands on the front of his coat. It was dirty, anyway.

"This Royal guy," She said, eventually. "How long is he going to be sticking around for, exactly?"

"Oh- uh, well..." Tremain frowned. He didn't have an exact answer for her, and she wasn't going to like that any more than he did. "That... has yet to be decided."

"Meaning what?" She asked, looking simultaneously disappointed and annoyed in that special way only she could.

"Meaning I don't know how long he's going to be staying for, Vasc," He said, getting to his feet and ushering her toward the door. "You see, he's... helping me with some... research. Or, well, I'm helping him. We're helping each other. Similar goals, you know?"

"Don't you push me, Tremain! What kind of research? What are you up to?" Vascula demanded. Tremain could hear her patience running out, and he didn't care. He had work to do. As soon as he had guided her across the threshold, he cut her off.

"Anyway, I need to get back to that now, if you don't mind! If you need anything, you know where to find me. Oh, and if you see Royal, could you send him up? I need to go over a few things with him. Thanks, Vasc, you're a peach!" He saw her open her mouth, but whatever she said, he couldn't quite make it out over the sound of the door slamming shut in her face.

With that, he dashed back to his desk, scrambling for a pen and another sheet of paper. The spark of inspiration rarely burned for long.

_  
\- At least three 100-foot lengths of heavy chain. Preferably iron?_

_\- Get Cesare to mix up something more powerful than their usual stuff- and a lot of it. Perhaps a little extra, as a contingency? (What to tell them it's for?)_

_\- Food? Will it need to eat? The others don't._

_\- More paper and ink for taking notes._


End file.
